Isn’t it funny how a bear likes honey? Or should that be ‘hunny’? Winnie-the-Pooh with his hibernation stash (Picture: EH Shepard & Egmont UK)

If you go down to the Hundred Acre Wood today, you’re sure of a big surprise. For its most famous resident, that silly old bear of very little brain, is ambling his way into the 21st century.

Winnie-the-Pooh has captivated readers since he was introduced to the world in the 1920s through author AA Milne’s writing and artist EH Shepard’s illustrations.

And now, on the eve of his 90th birthday, Pooh is embracing the latest technology to welcome a new generation into his world.

That doesn’t mean he will be installing wi-fi in his tree house under the name of Sanders. Instead, he and his pals Piglet, Eeyore, Tigger, Kanga, Roo, Rabbit, Owl and Christopher Robin are the stars of their very own iPad and iPhone app, which is available from today. It is the first time the original Milne/Shepard stories have been given the Apple treatment and the first time these beloved hand-drawn pictures will be animated.

The app, ‘Classic Pooh’, released by children’s books publisher Egmont Press, is free to download and comes with one Pooh story, which users can either read themselves or have it read to them by the voice of actor Rufus Jones. A second story is available to buy for £1.99 and additional tales will follow later this year.

Despite his rather old-fashioned persona, Winnie-the-Pooh is no stranger to new technology. His 1926 book was bundled for free on the iBooks app when the iPad was launched.

‘Pooh’s been a bit of a digital pioneer, really,’ said Tim Jones, publisher at Egmont Press. ‘He’s actually been at the forefront of this digital revolution.’

The challenge with Classic Pooh was to come up with an app that will appeal to children today but still retain the essence of what made the stories so loved in the first place.

‘As a children’s publisher, we want to be where children are experiencing entertainment and that is in the digital format,’ said Jones.

‘We’ve been working with illustrations that are 85 years old which have a place in British culture, illustrations that are greatly loved. We had to look at it very sensitively and that’s what we’ve tried to do.’

The app abridges Milne’s original text slightly to drive the plot along and there is audio of various sounds of nature from the Hundred Acre Wood, while the characters themselves move around as the stories unfold.

That might sound like sacrilege to those who like their books a million miles from an e-reader, but the reality is that children have changed since the 1920s, even if Pooh hasn’t.

‘The attention span and patience of today’s children is obviously different than in 1926,’ said Kristian Knak, lead user experience designer at Egmont in Copenhagen, Denmark.

‘If children are not engaged in the storytelling almost instantly, they’ll just move on to the next app. On one hand, we really want to preserve the integrity of the original work by Milne and Shepard, but on the other hand, when you want to reach out to children you need to adapt the storytelling, you need to enhance it.’

Pooh. What a balloon (Picture: EH Shepard & Egmont UK)

But at the same time, Milne’s style of writing could make the app stand out from other more gimmicky competitors.

‘There are a lot of very flashy, noisy apps out there, whereas ours is very gentle because of the nature of the stories,’ said Jones.

‘You really are drawn into the world and for the first time you get to see these wonderful illustrations move and interact with them. We’ve tried to create an experience that’s true to those stories and true to the vision of Milne and Shepard.

‘This world is very appealing because it’s totally unlike the crazy, modern world – it’s very quiet and peaceful… apart from Tigger.’

It took Knak and his team eight months to develop the app, touching up the original artwork and animating it. He admitted the task had its pressures.

‘This is heritage, right? The equivalent for a Dane is Hans Christian Andersen. That makes me incredibly excited to work on a project like this but it is also nerve-racking a little bit because I know these stories mean so much to the UK population and people worldwide.’

Pooh may be quintessentially English at first glance but his appeal knows no boundaries. He is an icon in Poland and Japan and is something of a touchstone for various philosophy enthusiasts.

The irony with Winnie-the-Pooh is that he is loved by people across the world yet the three people most closely associated with the character grew to resent him before they died.

Milne and Shepard both felt their work outside the Hundred Acre Wood was always overshadowed by Pooh, while Milne’s son, Christopher Robin, who inspired the books and was the basis of the only human character, wrote as an adult: ‘It seemed to me almost that my father had got where he was by climbing on my infant shoulders, that he had filched from me my good name and left me nothing but empty fame.’

Another controversy when it comes to Pooh is his clothing, or, more specifically, the fact that he was given any at all. While Milne and Shepard’s original creation was a bear of very little shame, the Pooh many younger readers picture today comes complete with a red shirt. While the colour combo of red and yellow might make merchandise an easier sell, it inevitably causes confusion. See also: Donald Duck.

Disney, who began snapping up the Winnie-the-Pooh rights in the early 1960s, often bears the brunt of the blame for Pooh’s shirtiness, but they merely kept the design brought in by US TV producer Stephen Slesinger, who painted Pooh’s top half red after he did an earlier licensing deal directly with Milne in 1932.

It was the most controversial pulling on of a red shirt until Sol Campbell moved across London from Tottenham Hotspur to Arsenal almost 70 years later. And it still rankles with Poohites.

‘We generally disapprove of what Disney has done with Pooh,’ said Edmund Croft, secretary of the Winnie-the-Pooh Society at Pembroke College, Cambridge, which is now in its 20th year.

‘“I’ve got a rumbly tumbly,” is not something Pooh would ever say. Though a bear of very little brain, he has some dignity.’

Croft isn’t sure Pooh needs an upgrade to iPad.

‘Not very much happens in the books, so much of the charm comes through the use of language,’ he pointed out.

Egmont worked with Disney on the new app but there was never any danger of something as drastic as painting the original Pooh to chime with modern merchandise.

‘There’s something quintessentially British about the character of classic Pooh that is appealing not just to British people but around the world,’ said Jones.

‘It’s trying to do something different, the humour is very different in the Disney stories. Milne’s humour is quite wry and quite British. Disney’s versions are all well and good in terms of what they do.’

Disney and Slesinger’s estate have engaged in a long-running on-off legal battle over the ownership rights to Pooh, and with an estimated £4bn in merchandising at stake each year, it’s easy to see why. Disney is in charge of the character until the copyright expires in 2026. Trustees of the estates of Milne and Shepard hold the rights of the original stories.

Those books remain Pooh’s legacy for many readers, no matter how many times they see him in a red shirt.

Jones calls him a ‘clever fool’ who is far from perfect, but that just makes him more loveable.

‘He’s a character that expresses everybody’s inner bear,’ he said. ‘He is greedy but friendly and kind.

‘Each of the characters has a strength and a weakness. Eeyore is very gloomy but he’s also very loyal. Piglet is timid but he overcomes his fear and does brave things. They all try to tame Tigger but never quite manage it. What keeps people coming back is that Pooh is just this incredibly endearing figure.’